This day in Georgia history: The Lynching of Leo Frank

More than 100 years ago, a man was hanged to death from a tree in Marietta after being abducted from a Georgia prison.

Leo Frank was lynched on Aug. 17, 1915 after then-Gov. John Slaton commuted his death sentence for a conviction of murdering a young girl.

In the more than a century since his death, historical evidence, analysis, and review of the case and its evidence have led to a consensus that Frank did not murder Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee at the National Pencil Company, where Frank worked as the superintendent.

Phagan was killed on April 26, 1913. Frank was arrested two days later.

Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1986 by Georgia Gov. Joe Frank Harris. A historical marker was placed at the site of Frank’s lynching in 2008.

Leo Frank is the only Jewish person ever lynched in the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

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The two-year proceedings in court for Phagan’s murder involved multiple alternative scenarios and suspects leading to Phagan’s death. The commutation of Frank’s death sentence by Slaton was focused on evidence and uncertainty, according to his letter affirming the change of sentence.

• “...The evidence might not have changed the verdict, but it might have caused the jury to render a verdict with the recommendation of mercy. In any event, the performance of my duty under the Constitution is a matter of conscience. The responsibility rests where the power is reposed. Judge Roan, with that awful sense of responsibility, which probably came over him as he thought of that Judge before whom he would shortly appear, calls to me from another world to request that I do that which he should have done. I can endure misconstruction, abuse and condemnation, but I cannot stand the constant companionship of an accusing conscience, which would remind me in every thought that I, as Governor of Georgia, failed to do what I thought to be right. There is a territory ‘beyond a Reasonable doubt and absolute certainty,’ for which the law provides in allowing life imprisonment instead of execution. This case has been marked by doubt. The trial judge doubted. Two Judges of the Supreme Court of Georgia doubted. Two Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States doubted. One of the three Prison commissioners doubted… In my judgment, by granting a commutation in this case, I am sustaining the jury, the judge, and the appellate tribunals, and at the same time am discharging that duty which is placed on me by the Constitution of the State,” according to archival records of the commutation letter preserved by the Jewish Amerian Society for Historic Preservation.

As widely reported by multiple publications at the time, memorabilia, souvenirs, and mementos of the lynching were kept and sold by those in attendance and others, according to nonfiction author Elaine Marie Alphin’s written accounting of the lynching and murder conviction.

Items included commemorative postcards, photographs, pieces of the oak tree he was hanged from, parts of the rope, and pieces of Frank’s shirt sleeves.

As reported by the New York Times in 1915, Marietta officials chose not to pursue charges for the lynching.

“The murder of Leo M. Frank will go unavenged by the law if it is to be punished in the county where it was committed. No jury in Cobb County would convict the murderers, no Grand Jury would indict them, no official would undertake to prosecute them,” the paper’s coverage read.

Included in a quote provided via telegram to the Times was a statement from then-Chief of Police for Marietta, H.H. Mooney.

The response from Mooney said “Leo Frank lynched here yesterday,” in response to a detective investigating the killing, “Come quick and help investigate.”

The detective, J. Burns, was later run out of town, according to the Times’ coverage.

The same year Frank was killed, a group called the Knights of Mary Phagan is credited with resurrecting the Klu Klux Klan.

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Historians and researchers who studied the Frank lynching attest the list of lynch-mob members is incomplete, but among the members identified were several prominent public figures or officials from Georiga.

In documents archived by the University of Georgia, citing research and publications by multiple historians, the mob that abducted Frank from the Milledgeville prison 108 years ago, then hanged him from a tree until his death included or was assisted by:

• Former governor of Georgia Joseph M. Brown

• Judge Newton Augustus Morris

• Eugene Herbert Clay, son of U.S. Senator Alexander S. Clay and a former mayor of Marietta, who later served as Georgia’s Senate President in 1920

• John Tucker Dorsey, a Marietta trial attorney, elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 1915

• Fred Morris, then a member of the Georgia General Assembly

• Bolan Glover Brumby, owner of the Marietta Chair and Table Company

• George Exie Daniell, a jewelry shop owner with a shop on Marietta Square and member of the Rotary Club

• Gordon Baxter Gann, at the time a probate court judge for Cobb County, later elected to serve as a member of the General Assembly in 1919, then as Mayor of Marietta in 1922 and 1927

• Newton Mayes Morris, a cousin of Judge Newton Morris

• William J. Frey, the former Sheriff of Cobb County from 1903 to 1909

• E.P. Dobbs, then-Mayor of Marietta

• L.B. Robeson, a railroad freight agent

• Jim Brumby, brother of Bolan Glover Brumby

• Robert A. Hill, a banker

• George Swanson, the Cobb County Sheriff in 1915

• William McKinney, a Cobb County sheriff’s deputy

• George Hicks, a Cobb County sheriff’s deputy

• Cicero Holton Dobbs, a taxi driver and Marietta grocery store owner

• D.R. Benton, Mary Phagan’s uncle

• Horace Hamby, a farmer

• “Coon” Shaw, a mule trader

• Emmet Burton, a police officer

• Luther Burton, a coal yard operator

• “Yellow Jacket” Brown, of Milledgeville

• Robert E. Lee Howell, cousin of Clark Howell, then-editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper

In the intervening years, the state of Georgia has pursued the creation of a lynching cold case unit via legislation inspired by Frank’s death and the lynchings of multiple African Americans.

The legislation, proposed in 2022, would have created a cold case unit within the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, State Law Department, State Board of Pardons and Paroles, and the Georgia Historic Preservation Division, for the purpose of investigation and historical preservation.

The bill did not pass, but its sponsors hoped to propose it again in the future, according to reporting by Channel 2 Action News.

Frank’s death remains one of the most well-known cases of American anti-Semitism in U.S. history.

Frank’s arrest in 1913 was one of the moments that spurred the formation of the ADL in Chicago, later becoming one of the largest organizations aimed at stopping defamation against Jews and securing equal and fair treatment and justice in America.

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